The Ice

I went down last night to see where the mushers come up off the ice and onto Front St. You think of ice as a simple flat expanse, but I found out that is not the case.

Under the ice, there is a whole world of things going on. There are storms caused by storms above and waves and warming and cooling trends. These activities cause jumbles which are like rough hills of varying size and cracks in the ice sometimes 6 inches deep. So picking your way across the ice is not what it might seem.

There are places, though, that are exactly what you might expect, that big flat expanse. As I flew into Nome from Elim, we saw a musher and team on glare ice sliding sideways. The ice certainly does offer a variety of terrains.

The trail has so many different characters that test you in many ways, and I am back to it.